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FLOOR GAMES 



FLOOR GAMES 



BY 






H/ G. WELLS 

AUTHOR OF " TONO-BUNGAY," " THE NEW MACHIAVELLI," 

ETC., ETC. 

With Photographs by the Author and Marginal 
Drawings by J. R. Sinclair 




BOSTON 
SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



i 



? 






Copyright, 1912 

By Small, Maynard and Company 
(incorporated) 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 






CONTENTS 

Section Page 

I The Toys to Have . . , . 9 

II The Game of the Wonderful 

Islands 33 

III Of the Building of Cities . . 51 

IV Funiculars, Marble Towers, 

Castles and War Games, but 
Very Little of War Games 85 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

A general view of the Wonderful Islands, showing 
Captain F. R. W.'s ship at anchor. Frontispiece 

A view showing the Island of the Temple and the 
invasion of the Indian territory by Captain G. P W. 18 

A close view of the temple, whose portals are guarded 
by grotesque plasticine monsters 30 

A view showing the raid of the Negroid savages upon 
the white settlers of Pear Tree Island 40 

A general view of Chamois City, showing the Cherry 
Tree Inn and the shopping quarter 50 

The railway station at Blue End 62 

The terraced hill on which stands the Town Hall. 
Behind can be seen the Zoological Gardens ... 72 

The School of Musketry. On the terrace the Town 
Guard parades in honor of the two mayors ... 84 



Section I 
THE TOYS TO HAVE 



THE TOYS TO HAVE 

The jolliest indoor games for 
boys and girls demand a floor, 
and the home that has no floor 
upon which games may be 
played falls so far short of hap- 
piness. It must be a floor cov- 
ered with linoleum or cork 
carpet, so that toy soldiers and 
such-like will stand up upon 
it, and of a color and surface 
that will take and show chalk 
marks; the common green- 
colored cork carpet without a 




J^*5 




io FLOOR GAMES 

pattern is the best of all. It 
must be no highway to other 
rooms, and well lit and airy. 
Occasionally, alas ! it must be 
scrubbed — and then a truce to 
Floor Games. Upon such a 
floor may be made an infini- 
tude of imaginative games, not 
only keeping boys and girls 
happy for days together, but 
building up a framework of 
spacious and inspiring ideas in 
them for after life. The men 
of to-morrow will gain new 
strength from nursery floors. I 
am going to tell of some of 
these games and what is most 




THE TOYS TO HAVE n 

needed to play them 5 I have 
tried them all and a score of 
others like them with my sons, 
and all of the games here illus- 
trated have been set out by us. 
I am going to tell of them here 
because I think what we have 
done will interest other fathers 
and mothers, and perhaps be 
of use to them (and to uncles 
and such-like tributary sub- 
species of humanity) in buying 
presents for their own and other 
people's children. 

Now, the toys we play with 
time after time, and in a thou- 
sand permutations and combi- 





12 FLOOR GAMES 

nations, belong to four main 
groups. We have (i) Sol- 
diers, and with these I class 
sailors, railway porters, civil- 
ians, and the lower animals 
generally, such as I will pres- 
ently describe in greater detail ; 
(2) Bricks; (3) Boards and 
Planks; and (4) a lot of Clock- 
work Railway Rolling-Stock 
and Rails. Also there are 
certain minor o b j ec ts — tin 
ships, Easter eggs, and the like 
— of which I shall make inci- 
dental mention, that like the 
kiwi and the duck-billed platy- 
pus refuse to be classified. 




s? 




THE TOYS TO HAVE 13 

These we arrange and rearrange 
in various ways upon our floor, 
making a world of them. In 
doing so we have found out 
all sorts of pleasant facts, and 
also many undesirable possibili- 
ties ; and very probably our 
experience will help a reader 
here and there to the former 
and save him from the latter. 

For instance, our planks and 
boards, and what one can do 
with them, have been a great 
discovery. Lots of boys and 
girls seem to be quite without 
planks and boards at all, and 
there is no regular trade in 




i 4 FLOOR GAMES 

them. The toyshops, we 
found, did not keep anything 
of the kind we wanted, and our 
boards, which we had to get 
made by a carpenter, are the 
basis of half the games we play. 
The planks and boards we have 
are of various sizes. We began 
with three of two yards by one ; 
they were made with cross 
pieces like small doors ; but 
these we found unnecessarily 
large, and we would not get 
them now after our present ex- 
perience. The best thickness, 
we think, is an inch for the 
larger sizes and three-quarters 



THE TOYS TO HAVE 15 

and a half inch for the smaller ; 
and the best sizes are a yard 
square, thirty inches square, two 
feet, and eighteen inches square 
— one or two of each, and a 
greater number of smaller ones, 
1 8 x 9, 9 x 9, and 9 x 44 With 
the larger ones we make islands 
and archipelagos on our floor 
while the floor is a sea, or we 
make a large island or a couple 
on the Venice pattern, or we 
pile the smaller on the larger 
to make hills when the floor is 
a level plain, or they roof in 
railway stations or serve as 
bridges, in such manner as I will 





i6 



FLOOR GAMES 








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presently illustrate. And these 
boards of ours pass into our 
next most important possession, 
which is our box of bricks. 

(But I was nearly forgetting 
to tell this, that all the thicker 
and larger of these boards have 
holes bored through them. At 
about every four inches is a 
hole, a little larger than an 
ordinary gimlet hole. These 
holes have their uses, as I will 
tell later, but now let me get 
on to the box of bricks.) 

This, again, wasn't a toy- 
shop acquisition. It came to 
us by gift from two generous 

15 



L 



/ 



THE TOYS TO HAVE 17 

friends, unhappily growing up 
and very tall at that; and they 
had it from parents who were 
one of several families who 
shared in the benefit of a Good 
Uncle. I know nothing cer- 
tainly of this man except that 
he was a Radford of Plymouth. 
I have never learned nor cared 
to learn of his commoner occu- 
pations, but certainly he was 
one of those shining and dis- 
tinguished uncles that tower 
up at times above the common 
levels of humanity. At times, 
when we consider our derived 
and undeserved share of his in- 



OF" 



jS. 





1 8 FLOOR GAMES 

heritance and count the joys it 
gives us, we have projected half 
in jest and half in earnest the 
putting together of a little ex- 
emplary book upon the subject 
of such exceptional men : Cele- 
brated Uncles^ it should be 
called ; and it should stir up all 
who read it to some striving at 
least towards the glories of the 
avuncular crown. What this 
great benefactor did was to en- 
gage a deserving unemployed 
carpenter through an entire win- 
ter making big boxes of wooden 
bricks for the almost innumer- 
able nephews and nieces with 



THE TOYS TO HAVE 19 

which an appreciative circle of 
brothers and sisters had blessed 
him. There are whole bricks 
4! inches x i\ x i|; there are 
half bricks 2§ x 2| x i|; and 
there are quarters — called by 
those previous owners (who 
have now ascended to, we hope 
but scarcely believe, a happier 
life near the ceiling) "piggys." 
You note how these sizes fit 
into the sizes of our boards, 
and of each size — we have 
never counted them, but we 
must have hundreds. We can 
pave a dozen square yards of 
floor with them. 






20 FLOOR GAMES 

How utterly we despise the 
silly little bricks of the toy- 
shops! They are too small to 
make a decent home for even 
the poorest lead soldiers, even 
if there were hundreds of them, 
and there are never enough, 
never nearly enough; even if 
you take one at a time and lay 
it down and say, "This is a 
house," even then there are not 
enough. We see rich people, 
rich people out of motor cars, 
rich people beyond the dreams 
of avarice, going into toyshops 
and buying these skimpy, 
sickly, ridiculous pseudo-boxes 



THE TOYS TO HAVE 21 



of bricklets, because they do 
not know what to ask for, 
and the toyshops are just the 
merciless mercenary enemies 
of youth and happiness — so 
far, that is, as bricks are con- 
cerned. Their unfortunate un- 
der-parented offspring mess 
about with these gifts, and 
don't make very much of them, 
and put them away; and you 
see their consequences in after 
life in the weakly-conceived 
villas and silly suburbs that 
people have built all round 
big cities. Such poor under- 
nourished nurseries must needs ^ 



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22 



FLOOR GAMES 





fall back upon the Encyclopedia 
/\ Britannica^ and even that is be- 
coming flexible on India paper! 
But our box of bricks almost 
satisfies. With our box of 
bricks we can scheme and 
build, all three of us, for the 
best part of the hour, and 
still have more bricks in the 
box. 

So much now for the bricks. 
I will tell later how we use 
cartridge paper and cardboard 
and other things to help in our 
building, and of the decorative 
use we make of plasticine. 
Of course, it goes without say- 




THE TOYS TO HAVE 



23 



ing that we despise those fool- 
ish, expensive, made-up wooden 
and pasteboard castles that are 
sold in shops — playing with 
them is like playing with some- 
body else's dead game in a 
state of rigor mortis. Let me 
now say a little about toy sol- 
diers and the world to which 
they belong. Toy soldiers 
used to be flat, small creatures 
in my own boyhood, in com- 
parison with the magnificent 
beings one can buy to-day. 
There has been an enormous 
improvement in our national 
physique in this respect. Now 







2 4 



FLOOR GAMES 




they stand nearly two inches 
high and look you broadly in 
the face, and they have the 
movable arms and alert intelli- 
gence of scientifically exercised 
men. You get five of them 
mounted or nine afoot in a box 
for a small price. We three 
like those of British manufac- 
ture best; other makes are of 
incompatible sizes, and we have 
a rule that saves much trouble, 
that all red coats belong to 
G. P. W., and all other colored 
coats to F. R. W., all gifts, be- 
quests, and accidents notwith- 
standing. Also we have sailors j 



THE TOYS TO HAVE 25 

but, since there are no red-coated 
sailors, blue counts as red. 

Then we have " beefeaters," ' 
Indians, Zulus, for whom there 
are special rules. We find we 
can buy lead dogs, cats, lions, 
tigers, horses, camels, cattle, 
and elephants of a reasonably 
corresponding size, and we have 
also several boxes of railway 
porters, and some soldiers we 
bought in Hesse-Darmstadt that 
we pass off on an unsuspecting 
home world as policemen. But 
we want civilians very badly. 
We found a box of German 

1 The warders in the Tower of London are called 
" beefeaters " ; the origin of the term is obscure. 





26 FLOOR GAMES 

civilians once in a shop, the 
right size but rather heavy, and 
running to nearly five cents 
apiece (which is too dear), 
gentlemen in tweed suits carry- 
ing bags, a top-hatted gentle- 
man, ladies in gray and white, 
two children, and a dog, and 
so on, but we have never been 
able to find any more. They 
do not seem to be made at all 
— will toy manufacturers please 
note? I write now as if I were 
Consul - General in Toyland, 
noting new opportunities for 
trade. Consequent upon this 
dearth, our little world suffers 




THE TOYS TO HAVE 27 

from an exaggerated curse of 
militarism, and even the grocer 
wears epaulettes. This might 
please Lord Roberts and Mr. 
Leo Maxse, but it certainly does 
not please us. I wish, indeed, 
that we could buy boxes of 
tradesmen: a blue butcher, a 
white baker with a loaf of 
standard bread, a merchant or 
so ; boxes of servants, boxes of 
street traffic, smart sets, and so 
forth. We could do with a 
judge and lawyers, or a box of 
vestrymen. It is true that we 
can buy Salvation Army lasses 
and football players^ but we are 




28 



FLOOR GAMES 





cold to both of these. We 
have, of course, boy scouts. 
With such boxes of civilians we 
could have much more fun 
than with the running, march- 
ing, swashbuckling soldiery that 
pervades us. They drive us 
to reviews; and it is only em- 
perors, kings, and very silly 
small boys who can take an un- 
dying interest in uniforms and 
reviews. 

And lastly, of our railways, 
let me merely remark here that 
we have always insisted upon 
one uniform gauge and every- 
thing we buy fits into and 




THE TOYS TO HAVE 29 

develops our existing railway 
system. Nothing is more in- 
dicative of the wambling sort 
of parent and a coterie of wit- 
less, worthless uncles than a 
heap of railway toys of different 
gauges and natures in the chil- 
dren's playroom. 

And so, having told you of 
the material we have, let me 
now tell you of one or two 
games (out of the innumerable 
many) that we have played. 
Of course, in this I have to be 
a little artificial. Actual games 
of the kind I am illustrating 
here have been played by us, 







3° 



FLOOR GAMES 



many and many a time, with 
joy and happy invention and no 
thought of publication. They 
have gone now, those games, 
into that vaguely luminous and 
iridescent world of memories 
into which all love-engendering 
happiness must go. But we 
have tried our best to set them 
out again and recall the good 
points in them here. 




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Section II 

THE GAME OF 
THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS 



THE GAME OF 
THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS 

In this game the floor is the 
sea. Half — rather the larger 
half because of some instinctive 
right of primogeniture — is 
assigned to the elder of my 
two sons (he is, as it were, its 
Olympian), and the other half 
goes to his brother. We dis- 
tribute our boards about the sea 
in an archipelagic manner. We 
then dress our islands, object- 
ing strongly to too close a scru- 






34 



FLOOR GAMES 





tiny of our proceedings until 
we have done. Here, in the 
illustration, is such an archi- 
pelago ready for its explorers, 
or rather on the verge of ex- 
ploration. There are alto- 
gether four islands, two to the 
reader's right and two to the 
left, and the nearer ones are 
the more northerly 5 it is as 
many as we could get into the 
camera. The northern island 
to the right is most advanced 
in civilization, and is chiefly 
temple. That temple has a flat 
roof, diversified by domes made 
of half Easter eggs and card- 



&OOU-SQ.NVJ- 




THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS 35 

board cones. These are sur- 
mounted by decorative work of 
a flamboyant character in plas- 
ticine, designed by G. P. W. 
An oriental population crowds 
the courtyard and pours out 
upon the roadway. Note the 
grotesque plasticine monsters 
who guard the portals, also by 
G. P. W., who had a free hand 
with the architecture of this 
remarkable specimen of eastern 
religiosity. They are nothing, 
you may be sure, to the gigan- 
tic idols inside, out of the reach 
of the sacrilegious camera. To 
the right is a tropical thatched 




36 FLOOR GAMES 

hut. The thatched roof is 
really that nice ribbed paper 
that comes round bottles — a 
priceless boon to these games. 
All that comes into the house 
is saved for us. The owner 
of the hut lounges outside the 
door. He is a dismounted 
cavalry-corps man, and he owns 
one cow. His fence, I may 
note, belonged to a little 
wooden farm we bought in 
Switzerland. Its human inhab- 
itants are scattered; its beasts 
follow a precarious living as 
wild guinea-pigs on the islands 
to the south. 




THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS 37 

Your attention is particularly 
directed to the trees about 
and behind the temple, which 
thicken to a forest on the fur- 
ther island to the right. These 
trees we make of twigs taken 
from trees and bushes in the 
garden, and stuck into holes in 
our boards. Formerly we lived 
in a house with a little wood 
close by, and our forests were 
wonderful. Now we are re- 
stricted to our garden, and we 
could get nothing for this set 
out but jasmine and pear. 
Both have wilted a little, and 
are not nearly such spirited 



A 





38 



FLOOR GAMES 




trees as you can make out of 
fir trees, for instance. It is for 
these woods chiefly that we have 
our planks perforated with little 
holes. No tin trees can ever 
be so plausible and various and 
jolly as these. With a good 
garden to draw upon one can 
make terrific sombre woods, 
and then lie down and look 
through them at lonely horse- 
men or wandering beasts. 

That further island on the 
right is a less settled country 
than the island of the temple. 
Camels, you note, run wild 
there; there is a sort of dwarf 




THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS 39 

elephant, similar to the now 
extinct kind of which one finds 
skeletons in Malta, pigs, a red 
parrot, and other such creatures, 
of lead and wood. The pear- 
trees are fine. It is those which 
have attracted white settlers 
(I suppose they are), whose 
thatched huts are to be seen 
both upon the beach and in- 
land. By the huts on the 
beach lie a number of pear- 
tree logs; but a raid of negroid 
savages from the adjacent island 
to the left is in progress, and 
the only settler clearly visible 
is the man in a rifleman's uni- 




4 o FLOOR GAMES 

form running inland for help. 
Beyond, peeping out among 
the trees, are the supports he 
seeks. 

These same negroid savages 
are as bold as they are ferocious. 
They cross arms of the sea 
upon their rude canoes, made 
simply of a strip of cardboard. 
Their own island, the one to 
the south-left, is a rocky wilder- 
ness containing caves. Their 
chief food is the wild-goat, but 
in pursuit of these creatures you 
will also sometimes find the 
brown bear, who sits — he is 
small but perceptible to the 








o 












^3 



THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS 41 

careful student — in the mouth 
of his cave. Here, too, you 
will distinguish small guinea- 
pig-like creatures of wood, in 
happier days the inhabitants of 
that Swiss farm. Sunken rocks 
off this island are indicated by 
a white foam which takes the 
form of letters, and you will 
also note a whirlpool between 
the two islands to the right. 

Finally comes the island near- 
est to the reader on the left. 
This also is wild and rocky, in- 
habited not by negroid blacks, 
but by Indians, whose tents, 
made by F. R. W. out of ordi- 





4 2 



FLOOR GAMES 




nary brown paper and adorned 
with chalk totems of a rude and 
characteristic kind, pour forth 
their fierce and well-armed in- 
habitants at the intimation of 
an invader. The rocks on this 
island, let me remark, have 
great mineral wealth. Among 
them are to be found not only 
sheets and veins of silver paper, 
but great nuggets of metal, 
obtained by the melting down 
of hopelessly broken soldiers in 
an iron spoon. Note, too, 
the peculiar and romantic shell 
beach of this country. It is 
an island of exceptional interest 



* 




THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS 43 

to the geologist and scientific 
explorer. The Indians, you ob- 
serve, have domesticated one 
leaden and one wooden cow. 

This is how the game would 
be set out. Then we build 
ships and explore these islands, 
but in these pictures the ships 
are represented as already arriv- 
ing. The ships are built out 
of our wooden bricks on flat 
keels made of two wooden pieces 
of 9 x 4! inches, which are very 
convenient to push about over 
the floor. Captain G. P. W. 
is steaming into the bay be- 
tween the eastern and western 




44 



FLOOR GAMES 



W: 



islands. He carries heavy guns, 
his ship bristles with an ex- 
tremely aggressive soldiery, who 
appear to be blazing away for 
the mere love of the thing. 
(I suspect him of Imperialist 
intentions.) Captain F. R. W. 
is apparently at anchor be- 
tween his northern and south- 
ern islands. His ship is of a 
slightly more pacific type. I 
note on his deck a lady and a 
gentleman (of German origin) 
with a bag, two of our all too 
rare civilians. No doubt the 
bag contains samples and a 
small conversation dictionary in 




THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS 45 

the negroid dialects. (I think 
F. R. W. may turn out to be 
a Liberal.) Perhaps he will sail 
on and rescue the raided huts, 
perhaps he will land and build 
a jetty, and begin mining 
among the rocks to fill his hold 
with silver. Perhaps the natives 
will kill and eat the gentleman 
with the bag. All that is for 
Captain F. R. W. to decide. 

You see how the game goes 
on. We land and alter things, 
and build and rearrange, and 
hoist paper flags on pins, and 
subjugate populations, and con- 
fer all the blessings of civiliza- 




46 



FLOOR GAMES 





tion upon these lands. We 
keep them going for days. 
And at last, as we begin to 
tire of them, comes the scrub- 
bing brush, and we must burn 
our trees and dismantle our 
islands, and put our soldiers 
in the little nests of drawers, 
and stand the island boards up 
against the wall, and put every- 
thing away. Then perhaps, 
after a few days, we begin upon 
some other such game, just as 
we feel disposed. But it is 
never quite the same game, 
never. Another time it may 
be wildernesses for example, 



THE WONDERFUL ISLANDS 47 

and the boards are hills, and 
never a drop of water is to be 
found except for the lakes and 
rivers we may mark out in 
chalk. But after one example 
others are easy, and next I will 
tell you of our way of making 
towns. 






Some Suggestions for Toy Makers {see page 26). 



Section III 
OF THE BUILDING OF CITIES 



OF THE BUILDING OF CITIES 

We always build twin cities, 
like London and Westminster, 
or Buda-Pesth, because two of 
us always want, both of them, 
to be mayors and municipal 
councils, and it makes for 
local freedom and happiness to 
arrange it so; but when steam 
railways or street railways are 
involved we have our rails in 
common, and we have an ex- 
cellent law that rails must be 



A 



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52 



FLOOR GAMES 





laid down and switches kept 
open in such a manner that 
anyone feeling so disposed may 
send a through train from their 
own station back to their own 
station again without need- 
less negotiation or the per- 
sonal invasion of anybody else's 
administrative area. It is an 
undesirable thing to have other 
people bulging over one's 
houses, standing in one's open 
spaces, and, in extreme cases, 
knocking down and even tread- 
ing on one's citizens. It leads 
at times to explanations that 
are afterwards regretted. 




THE BUILDING OF CITIES 53 

We always have twin cities, 
or at the utmost stage of coal- 
escence a city with two wards, 
Red End and Blue End; we 
mark the boundaries very care- 
fully, and our citizens have so 
much local patriotism (Mr. 
Chesterton will learn with pleas- 
ure) that they stray but rarely 
over that thin little streak of 
white that bounds their muni- 
cipal allegiance. Sometimes we 
have an election for mayor; it 
is like a census but very abusive, 
and Red always wins. Only 
citizens with two legs and at 
least one arm and capable of 




54 FLOOR GAMES 

standing up may vote, and 
voters may poll on horseback 5 
boy scouts and women and 
children do not vote, though 
there is a vigorous agitation to 
remove these disabilities. Zulus 
and foreign-looking persons, 
such as East Indian cavalry and 
American Indians, are also dis- 
franchised. So are riderless 
horses and camels ; but the ele- 
phant has never attempted to 
vote on any occasion, and does 
not seem to desire the privilege. 
It influences public opinion 
quite sufficiently as it is by 
nodding its head. 




THE BUILDING OF CITIES 55 

We have set out and I have 
photographed one of our cities 
to illustrate more clearly the 
amusement of the game. Red 
End is to the reader's right, 
and includes most of the hill 
on which the town stands, a 
shady zoological garden, the 
town hall, a railway tunnel 
through the hill, a museum 
(away in the extreme right- 
hand corner), a church, a rifle 
range, and a shop. Blue End 
has the railway station, four or 
five shops, several homes, a 
hotel, and a farm-house, close 
to the railway station. The 




56 



FLOOR GAMES 



boundary drawn by me as over- 
lord (who also made the hills 
and tunnels and appointed the 
trees to grow) runs irregularly 
between the two shops nearest 
the cathedral, over the shoulder 
in front of the town hall, and 
between the farm and the rifle 



range. 

The nature of the hills I 
have already explained, and 
this time we have had no lakes 
or ornamental water. These 
are very easily made out of a 
piece of glass — the glass lid 
of a box for example — laid 



upon silver paper. Such water 





THE BUILDING OF CITIES 57 

becomes very readily populated 
by those celluloid seals and 
swans and ducks that are now 
so common. Paper fish appear 
below the surface and may be 
peered at by the curious. But 
on this occasion we have noth- 
ing of the kind, nor have we 
made use of a green-colored 
tablecloth we sometimes use to 
drape our hills. Of course, a 
large part of the fun of this 
game lies in the witty in- 
corporation of all sorts of 
extraneous objects. But the 
incorporation must be witty, 
or you may soon convert 




fc* 




5» 



FLOOR GAMES 



t 



Tori i o 




the whole thing into an inco- 
herent muddle of half-good 
ideas. 

I have taken two photo- 
graphs, one to the right and 
one to the left of this agreeable 
place. I may perhaps adopt a 
kind of guide-book style in re- 
viewing its principal features: 
I begin at the railway station. 
^ I have made a rather nearer 
and larger photograph of the 
railway station, which presents 
a diversified and entertaining 
scene to the incoming visitor. 
Porters (out of a box of por- 
ters) career here and there with 




THE BUILDING OF CITIES 59 

the trucks and light baggage. 
Quite a number of our all-too- 
rare civilians parade the plat- 
form: two gentlemen, a lady, 
and a small but evil-looking 
child are particularly notice- 
able; and there is a wooden 
sailor with jointed legs, in a 
state of intoxication as repre- 
hensible as it is nowadays hap- 
pily rare. Two virtuous dogs 
regard his abandon with quiet 
scorn. The seat on which he 
sprawls is a broken piece of 
some toy whose nature I have 
long forgotten, the station clock 
is a similar fragment, and so is 







60 FLOOR GAMES 

the metallic pillar which bears 
the name of the station. So 
many toys, we find, only be- 
come serviceable with a little 
smashing. There is an alle- 
gory in this — as Hawthorne 
used to write in his diary. 

("What is he doing, the great god Pan, 
Down in the reeds by the river?") 

The fences at the ends of 
the platforms are pieces of 
wood belonging to the game 
of Matador — that splendid and 
very educational construction 
game, hailing, I believe, from 
Hungary. There is also, I re- 




THE BUILDING OF CITIES 61 




gret to say, a blatant advertise- 
ment of Jab's "Hair Color/' 
showing the hair. (In the 
photograph the hair does not 
come out very plainly.) ThisfiT 
is by G. P. W., who seems \ 
marked out by destiny to be 
the advertisement-writer of the 
next generation. He spends 7^ 
much of his scanty leisure r< 
inventing: and drawing adver- p rowH,h& 

O & Ton Brown 

tisements of imaginary com- J^ 
modities. Oblivious to many r 
happy, beautiful, and noble 
things in life, he goes about 
studying and imitating the lit- 
erature of the billboards. He 




BLACK IN 
Ooots 



run 
Cook, imc 




■ PQLICEnAM ^) 
For sale . 



G=^& /\r-\o Seer -rvxer SiC^tj 




A DAY AT TWr 







62 FLOOR GAMES 

and his brother write news- 
papers almost entirely devoted 
to these annoying appeals. 
You will note, too, the placard 
at the mouth of the railway 
tunnel urging the existence of 
Jinks' Soap upon the passing 
traveller. The oblong object 
on the placard represents, no 
doubt, a cake of this offen- 
sive and aggressive commodity. 
The zoological garden flaunts 
a placard, "Zoo, two cents 
pay," and the grocer's picture 
of a cabbage with "Get Them" 
is not to be ignored. F. R. W. 
is more like the London County 




THE BUILDING OF CITIES 63 

Council in this respect, and pre- 
fers bare walls. 

" Returning from the sta- 
tion, 5 ' as the guide-books say, 
and " giving one more glance" 
at the passengers who are wait- 
ing for the privilege of going 
round the circle in open cars 
and returning in a prostrated 
condition to the station again, 
and " observing" what admir- 
able platforms are made by our 
9 by j\\ pieces, we pass out to 
the left into the village street. 
A motor omnibus (a one-horse 
hospital cart in less progressive 
days) stands waiting for passen- 




SCURS'O 



TUT* 



64 



FLOOR GAMES 





gers; and, on our way to the 
Cherry Tree Inn, we remark 
two nurses, one in charge of a 
child with a plasticine head. 
The landlord of the inn is a 
small grotesque figure of plas- 
ter; his sign is fastened on by 
a pin. No doubt the refresh- 
ment supplied here has an 
enviable reputation, to judge 
by the alacrity with which a 
number of riflemen move to- 
wards the door. The inn, by 
the by, like the station and 
some private houses, is roofed 
with stiff paper. 

These stiff-paper roofs are 






THE BUILDING OF CITIES 65 

one of our great inventions. 
We get thick, stiff paper and 
cut it to the sizes we need. 
After the game is over, we put 
these roofs inside one another 
and stick them into the book- 
shelves. The roof one folds 
and puts away will live to roof 
another day. 

Proceeding on our way past 
the Cherry Tree, and resisting 
the cosy invitation of its portals, 
we come to the shopping quar- 
ter of the town. The stock in 
the windows is made by hand 
out of plasticine. We note 
the meat and hams of "Mr. 





66 FLOOR GAMES 

Woddy," the cabbages and 
carrots of " Tod & Brothers," 
the general activities of the 
"Jokil Co." shopmen. It is 
de rigueur with our shop assist- 
ants that they should wear 
white helmets. In the street, 
boy scouts go to and fro, a 
wagon clatters by ; most of the 
adult population is about its 
business, and a red-coated band 
plays along the roadway. Con- 
trast this animated scene with 
the mysteries of sea and for- 
est, rock and whirlpool, in our 
previous game. Further on is 
fountc 1 the big church or cathedral. 

| KCC TO THE RtCHrj 




THE BUILDING OF CITIES 67 

It is built in an extremely de- 
based Gothic style; it reminds 
us most of a church we once 
surveyed during a brief visit to 
Rotterdam on our way up the 
Rhine. A solitary boy scout, 
mindful of the views of Lord 
Haldane^ enters its high portal. 
Passing the cathedral, we con- 
tinue to the museum. This 
museum is no empty boast; 
it contains mineral specimens, 
shells — such great shells as 
were found on the beaches 
of our previous game, — the 
Titanic skulls of extinct rabbits 
and cats, and other such won- 




68 



FLOOR GAMES 





ders. The slender curious may 
lie down on the floor and peep 
in at the windows. 

"We now," says the guide- 
book, "retrace our steps to the 
shops, and then, turning to the 
left, ascend under the trees up 
the terraced hill on which stands 
the Town Hall. This magnifi- 
cent building is surmounted by 
a colossal statue of a chamois, 
the work of a Wengen artist; 
it is in two stories, with a bat- 
tlemented roof, and a crypt 
(entrance to right of steps) 
used for the incarceration of 
offenders. It is occupied by 



THE BUILDING OF CITIES 69 

the town guard, who wear 
c beefeater' costumes of an- 
cient origin." 

Note the red parrot perched 
on the battlements; it lives tame 
in the zoological gardens, and 
is of the same species as one 
we formerly observed in our 
archipelago. Note, too, the 
brisk cat-and-dog encounter be- 
low. Steps descend in wide 
flights down the hillside into 
Blue End. The two couchant 
lions on either side of the steps 
are in plasticine, and were exe- 
cuted by that versatile artist, 
who is also mayor of Red End, 



^%v 




7° 



FLOOR GAMES 




G. P. W. He is present. Our 
photographer has hit upon a 
happy moment in the history 
of this town, and a conversa- 
tion of the two mayors is going 
on upon the terrace before the 
palace. F. R. W., mayor of 
Blue End, stands on the steps 
in the costume of an admiral 5 
G. P. W. is on horseback (his 
habits are equestrian) on the ter- 
race. The town guard parades 
in their honor, and up the hill 
a number of blue-clad musi- 
cians (a little hidden by trees) 
ride on gray horses towards 
them. 




/fE>h 



THE BUILDING OF CITIES 71 

Passing in front of the town 
hall, and turning to the right, 
we approach the zoological gar- 
dens. Here we pass two of 
our civilians: a gentleman in 
black, a lady, and a large boy 
scout, presumably their son. 
We enter the gardens, which 
are protected by a bearded 
janitor, and remark at once a 
band of three performing dogs, 
who are, as the guide-book 
would say, "discoursing sweet 
music. 55 In neither ward of 
the city does there seem to 
be the slightest restraint upon 
the use of musical instruments. 






7 2 



FLOOR GAMES 




It is no place for neurotic 
people. 

The gardens contain the in- 
evitable elephants, camels (which 
we breed, and which are there- 
fore in considerable numbers), 
a sitting bear, brought from last 
ame's caves, goats from the 



same region, tamed and now 
running loose in the gardens, 
dwarf elephants, wooden non- 
descripts, and other rare crea- 
tures. The keepers wear a 
uniform not unlike that of rail- 
way guards and porters. We 
wander through the gardens, 
return, descend the hill by the 




THE BUILDING OF CITIES 73 

school of musketry, where sol- 
diers are to be seen shooting 
at the butts, pass through the 
paddock of the old farm, and 
so return to the railway station, 
extremely gratified by all we 
have seen, and almost equally 
divided in our minds between 
the merits and attractiveness of 
either ward. A clockwork train 
comes clattering into the station, 
we take our places, somebody 
hoots or whistles for the engine 
(which can't), the signal is 
knocked over in the excitement 
of the moment, the train starts, 
and we "wave a long, regretful^ 




a 




r 



T«.y oo^ we^-eno 



^C*,T ano doe S 

FAPTHEjr 




74 FLOOR GAMES 

farewell to the salubrious cheer- 
fulness of Chamois City." . . . 
You see now how we set 
out and the spirit in which we 
set out our towns. It demands 
but the slightest exercise of the 
imagination to devise a hun- 
dred additions and variations 
of the scheme. You can make 
picture-galleries — great fun for 
small boys who can draw; you 
can make factories; you can 
plan out flower-gardens — which 
appeals very strongly to intelli- 
gent little girls; your town hall 
may become a fortified castle; 
may put the whole 




THE BUILDING OF CITIES 75 

town on boards and make a 
Venice of it, with ships and 
boats upon its canals, and ^gL 

* 'I'M 

bridges across them. We used 
to have some very serviceable 
ships of cardboard, with flat 
bottoms; and then we used to 
have a harbor, and the ships 
used to sail away to distant 
rooms, and even into the gar- 
den, and return with the most 
remarkable cargoes, loads of 
nasturtium-stem logs, for ex- 
ample. We had sacks then, 
made of glove-fingers, and sev- g 
eral toy cranes. I suppose we - 
could find most of these again ^ 





76 



FLOOR GAMES 





if we hunted for them. Once, 
with this game fresh in our 
minds, we went to see the 
docks, which struck us as just 
our old harbor game magnified. 

" I say, Daddy," said one 
of us in a quiet corner, wist- 
fully, as one who speaks know- 
ingly against the probabilities 
of the case, and yet with a 
faint, thin hope, "couldn't 
we play just for a little with 
these sacks . . . until some- 
body comes?" 

Of course the setting-out of 
the city is half the game. Then 
you devise incidents. As I 



THE BUILDING OF CITIES 77 

wanted to photograph the par- 
ticular set-out for the purpose 
of illustrating this account, I 
took a larger share in the 
arrangement than I usually do- 
It was necessary to get every- 
thing into the picture, to ensure 
a light background that would 
throw up some of the trees, 
prevent too much overlapping, 
and things like that. When 
the photographing was over, 
matters became more normal. 
I left the schoolroom, and when 
I returned I found that the 
group of riflemen which had 
been converging on the public- 



*^>. 





78 FLOOR GAMES 

house had been sharply recalled 
to duty, and were trotting in a 
disciplined, cheerless way to- 
wards the railway station. The 
elephant had escaped from the 
zoo into the Blue Ward, and 
was being marched along by a 
military patrol. The originally 
scattered boy scouts were being 
paraded. G. P. W. had demol- 
ished the shop of the Jokil 
Company, and was building a 
Red End station near the bend. 
The stock of the Jokil Com- 
pany had passed into the hands 
of the adjacent storekeepers. 
Then the town hall ceremonies 




THE BUILDING OF CITIES 79 

came to an end and the guard 
marched off. Then G. P. W. 
demolished the rifle-range, and 
ran a small branch of the urban 
railway uphill to the town hall 
door, and on into the zoological 
gardens. This was only the 
beginning of a period of enter- 
prise in transit, a small railway 
boom. A number of halts of 
simple construction sprang up. 
There was much making of 
railway tickets, of a size that 
enabled passengers to stick their 
heads through the middle and 
wear them as a Mexican does 
his blanket. Then a battery 



E£z£ 




8o 



FLOOR GAMES 





of artillery turned up in the 
High Street and there was talk 
of fortifications. Suppose wild 
Indians were to turn up across 
the plains to the left and attack 
the town! Fate still has toy 
drawers untouched. . . . 

So things will go on till 
putting-away night on Friday. 
Then we shall pick up the 
roofs and shove them away 
among the books, return the 
clockwork engines very care- 
fully to their boxes, for engines 
are fragile things, stow the sol- 
diers and civilians and animals 
in their nests of drawers, burn 





THE BUILDING OF CITIES 81 

the trees again — this time they 
are sweet-bay 5 and all the joys 
and sorrows and rivalries and 
successes of Blue End and Red 
End will pass, and follow Car- 
thage and Nineveh, the empire 
of Aztec and Roman, the arts 
of Etruria and the palaces of 
Crete, and the plannings and 
contrivings of innumerable myr- 
iads of children, into the limbo 
of games exhausted ... it may 
be, leaving some profit, in 
thoughts widened, in strength- 
ened apprehensions; it may be, 
leaving nothing but a memory 
that dies. 




S^S*^ , T 



Section IV 

FUNICULARS, MARBLE TOW- 
ERS, CASTLES AND WAR 
GAMES, BUT VERY LITTLE 
OF WAR GAMES 



FUNICULARS, MARBLE TOW- 
ERS, CASTLES AND WAR 
GAMES, BUT VERY LITTLE 
OF WAR GAMES 



I have now given two general 
types of floor game; but these 
are only just two samples of 
delightful and imagination-stir- 
ring variations that can be con- 
trived out of the toys I have 
described. I will now glance 
rather more shortly at some ^d^A^ki^ 
other very good uses of the 
floor, the boards, the bricks, 





86 



FLOOR GAMES 




the soldiers, and the railway 
system — that pentagram for 
exorcising the evil spirit of dul- 
1 ness from the lives of little 
boys and girls. And first, 
there is a kind of lark we call 
Funiculars. There are times 
when islands cease somehow 
to dazzle, and towns and cities 
are too orderly and uneventful 
and cramped for us, and we 
want something — something to 
whizz. Then we say: "Let 
us make a funicular. Let us 
make a funicular more than we 
have ever done. Let us make 
one to reach up to the table." 



FUNICULARS, WAR GAMES 87 

We dispute whether it isn't a 
mountain railway we are after. 
The bare name is refreshing; 
it takes us back to that unfor- 
gettable time when we all went 
to Wengen, winding in and 
out and up and up the moun- 
tain side — from slush, to such 
snow and sunlight as we had 
never seen before. And we 
make a mountain railway. So 
far, we have never got it up to 
the table, but some day we 
will. Then we will have a 
station there on the flat, and 
another station on the floor, 
with shunts and sidings to each. 




/ 



88 



FLOOR GAMES 



The peculiar joy of the 
mountain railway is that, if it is 
properly made, a loaded car 
— not a toy engine ; it is too 
rough a game for delicate, re- 
spectable engines — will career 
from top to bottom of the 
system, and go this way .and 
that as your cunningly-arranged 
switches determine; and after- 
wards — and this is a wonderful 
and distinctive discovery — you 
can send it back by 'lectric. 

What is a 'lectric ? You 
may well ask. 'Lectrics were 
invented almost by accident, 
by one of us, to whom also the 




FUNICULARS, WAR GAMES 89 

name is due. It came out of 
an accident to a toy engine ; a 
toy engine that seemed done 
for, and that was yet full of 
life. 

You know, perhaps, what a 
toy engine is like. It has the 
general appearance of a railway 
engine ; funnels, buffers, cab, 
and so forth. All these are 
very elegant things, no doubt j 
but they do not make for light- 
ness, they do not facilitate hill- 
climbing. Now,, sometimes an 
engine gets its clockwork out 
of order, and then it is over 
and done for; but sometimes 




jfTTm n n 1 l 

^^-JjTSU GLl iSJ BD s/~ 



9° 



FLOOR GAMES 




it is merely the outer sem- 
blance that is injured — the 
funnel bent, the body twisted. 
You remove the things and, 
behold ! you have bare clock- 
work on wheels, an apparatus of 
almost malignant energy, soul 
without body, a kind of me- 
tallic rage. This it was that our 
junior member instantly knew 
for a 'lectric, and loved from 
the moment of its stripping. 

(I have, by the by, known 
a very serviceable little road 
'lectric made out of a clock- 
work mouse.) 

Well, when we have got 




FUNICULARS, WAR GAMES 91 

chairs and boxes and bricks, 
and graded our line skilfully 
and well, easing the descent, 
and being very careful of the 
joining at the bends for fear 
that the descending trucks and 
cars will jump the rails, we 
send down first an empty truck, 
then trucks loaded with bricks 
and lead soldiers, and then the 
'lectric; and then afterwards 
the sturdy 'lectric shoves up 
the trucks again to the top, with 
a kind of savagery of purpose 
and a whizz that is extremely 
gratifying to us. We make 
switches in these lines 5 we 




9 2 



FLOOR GAMES 





make them have level-crossings, 
at which collisions are always 
being just averted; the lines 
go over and under each other, 
and in and out of tunnels. . . . 
The marble tower, again, is 
a great building, on which we 
devise devious slanting ways 
down which marbles run, I do 
not know why it is amusing to 
make a marble run down a long 
intricate path, and dollop down 
steps, and come almost but not 
quite to a stop, and rush out 
of dark places and across little 
bridges of card: it is, and we 
often do it. 




FUNICULARS, WAR GAMES 93 

Castles are done with bricks 
and cardboard turrets and a 
portcullis of card, and draw- 
bridge and moats; they are a 
mere special sort of city-build- 
ing, done because we have a 
box of men in armor. We 
could reconstruct all sorts of 
historical periods if the toy- 
soldier makers would provide us 
with people. But at present, 
as I have already complained, 
they make scarcely anything 
but contemporary fighting men. 
And of the war game I must 
either write volumes or nothing. 
For the present let it be noth- 



C23 
1 





# 




94 



FLOOR GAMES 






ing. Some day, perhaps, I 
will write a great book about 
the war game and tell of battles 
and campaigns and strategy 
and tactics. But this time I set 
out merely to tell of the ordi- 
nary joys of playing with the 
floor, and to gird improvingly 
and usefully at toymakers. So 
much, I think, I have done. 
If one parent or one uncle 
buys the wiselier for me, I 
shall not altogether have lived 
in vain. ^ 


















































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